Welcome to my photo travel blog. I am a landscape and night photographer who conducts photography workshops in some of America’s most exotic landscapes.
I just completed a travel guide to the best landscape photography locations in Southern California, to be available in September 2015.

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Wednesday, June 16, 2010

If you're ever shooting on the Big Sur Coast, it helps to chat with the officers of the California Highway Patrol there. Aside fromresponding to accidents caused by the ocasional tourist who causes a truck to jackknife due to leaving her bicycle laying down on the road (true story), a lot of their time is spent interfacing with the public. They know every turnout and access point (and have participated in rescues people making their way to inaccessible spots), so they can help you spend your time there efficiently and safely

This waterfall, McWay Falls, is apparently one of two waterfalls dropping into the ocean in the continental United States, the other being Alamere Falls on Point Reyes.

This waterfall is accessed via the parking lot for Julia Pfeiffer State Park, but the park doesn't open until 8am, so I took this from a turnout up on Hwy 1, a few dozen yards higher than the standard path. The park also asks for a $10 fee for entry and parking!

There are some seriously quirkly rules and restrictions for accessing much of the coast, so I'll try to add notes as I add photos. For example, I blew off Pfeiffer Beach, a Forest Service access (due to all of those trees on the beach?), but unfortunately they've allowed a concessionaire to profit from Federal Recreation Passholders who bought the annual pass under the understanding that it would gain them entry to USDA Forest Service sites. They also close at sunset, not 30-40 minutes later when the sunset color is over, so it's virtually worthless to photographers who prefer to shoot in the best light(at least the ones who choose not to risk getting a ticket). I'll be sending the confused USDA bureaucrats some correspondence on that one... and I'll share the names with concerned photographers as well so your voices can be heard and your interests represented. Bureaucrats don't like risk, so I suspect they may show some flexibility if their users start raising a stink about counterproductive policies. Point Lobos State Park just up the road allows photographers to stay until 30 minutes after sunset, stilla bit tight but a far more reasonable compromise.

Saturday, June 05, 2010

Topaz Lake is one of those places that I rarely plan on being at when the light is best, but I often find myself there anyway as I make my way between Tahoe, Mono Lake, and Monitor and Ebbetts passes.

On this morning I was there in time to watch a nicely shaped Sierra Wave lenticular cloud gradually light up from orange to pink to white, and I stayed long enough to watch the warm morning sunlight slide down the foothills to the lake.

The only thing I regretted was not carrying my fishing rods down to the lake, as there were large trout feeding, taunting me just within casting distance. The lake straddles the California Nevada border, and although I was standing in Nevada facing California, I later determined that my California fishing license would have enabled me to take a few casts. Oh well, the fish will only be bigger when I return!

Friday, June 04, 2010

I camped on a sagebrush-covered knoll overlooking Mono Lake with an expansive view so I could easily assess the prospects for a great sunrise early the next morning. As I had anticipated, the heavier storm clouds from the night before had broken up somewhat, leaving interesting clouds for the sun to light up but also leaving enough of an opening to the East to offer the promise of sending the orange sunrise light shooting in under them.

I moved quickly to get dressed and drive over to the South Tufa site with enough time left over to alk to the lake before the best light arrived. When I arrived, the parking lot was empty! The Sierra Nevada however already ahd a deep blood red tint on them, so there was no time to waste. I half walked, half jogged to the lake. It was tempting to start shooting immediately, but I watned to get a timelapse sequence going a couple of coves over, so I made my way over there as fast as I could.

Thursday, June 03, 2010

This morning started with smoke from a forest management fire the night before having settled with the coldest air down towards Crowley Lake, so I decided to stay a little higher at first so I could shoot towards the Sierra Nevada without much optical interference. I visited an area of nice cracked mud patterns.

Next I visited a pond where I could find a nice reflection shooting towards the Sierra Nevada as they caught the rising sun.

I was fortunate to also find a pair of American Avocets performing a courtship dance.Once the sun was up I moved over to a large pond where, wind conditions permitting, I might zoom in on a reflection featuring the backlit smoke against a minimalist horizon.

Next I moved to a very small vernal pool that I had shot at a year earlier under more cloudy conditions, but this time the shot would ahve a totally differnt feel, as I'd catch the snowy Sierra contrasted against a blue sky.

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I'm an award-winning landscape and night photographer, workshop instructor, and author. I have been exploring the American West for four decades. I entered a career in digital imaging over three decades ago in the Graphic Printing and Imaging Division at Tektronix. I've used digital cameras close to 15 years. I am an avid traveler and prolific photographer, sharing new work daily for the past 10 years (as Internet availability allows, as I travel).

For the past five years, I have been recording my favorite 300+ locations in California from Yosemite to San Diego, to share them with you in my new book, "Photographing California Vol. 2 - South", now available in bookstores, on Amazon.com and via my blog.

Ansel Adams

Marcus Aurelius

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breath, to think, to enjoy, to love."

John Muir

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike."

Ansel Adams

"I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us"

Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It":

“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.I am haunted by waters.”

John Muir

"You may be a little cold some nights, on mountain tops above the timber-line, but you will see the stars, and by and by you can sleep enough in your town bed, or at least in your grave."

Henry David Thoreau

"The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time."

Edward Abbey

“High technology has done us one great service: It has retaught us the delight of performing simple and primordial tasks - chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from a spring”

Ansel Adams

"There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

"Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again."

Gary Snyder

"Practically speaking, a life that is vowed to simplicity, appropriate boldness, good humor, gratitude, unstinting work and play, and lots of walking brings us close to the actual existing world and its wholeness."

Henry David Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life..."

Georgia O'Keeffe

"Come quickly. You mustn't miss the dawn. It will never be just like this again..."